Most folks would not trifle with the Hart brothers. Such folks walked. Some folks did not know better. They are planted-not so deep as to keep the cold of the high country from their bones, but deep enough to keep the wolves from their place of repose. That would do. They were well known as gun men, as shootists, as bounty hunters. Their first loyalty was for each other. Their honor was kept for themselves. Wherever they rode the people knew them and their deadly skills. The Hart brothers were going to the Cedar City Rendezvous. The territory was infested with renegades and outlaws; nearly all of them far less honorable and far more rapacious than the very capable Hart brothers. Death and rape and robbery seemed to come out of the ground with the rippling heat like surf against a shore. There seemed to be little that the law and decent citizens could do to stem the tide . . . Until the sheriff of Cedar City, Utah Territory, decided to let the criminal element take care of itself and sent out invitations to the Rendezvous. Hundreds of killers showed up. "You are all here by invitation. There be five miles 'tween here and town. The object is for you to get from here to there . . . alive enough to claim the fortune in gold. Those of you what make it that far will get an equal share. And the Governor's unconditional pardon goes with the loot." A murmur ran thorough the great company armed to its blackened teeth, Some of the shootists thought of saloons and every painted woman between Memphis and Frisco. The Hart Brothers thought of fertile farm land where a body could take root and grow along with crops and children: "Men, the rules be simple: Every man for hisself from here to the edge of town. You have until I get to town to find your place and cover. When I signal with my rifle, this shoot starts!" Before the sheriff was out of sight, the throng exploded in all directions toward rocky hills, scrub brush cover, and small box canyons. For fifteen long minutes there was silence. Then a shot rolled lazily through the stifling heat. A heartbeat later, the thin air erupted with musketry. In the first moments of the Cedar City Rendezvous, a dozen men fell from their saddles and dropped to the salty ground.

His name conjures images of the Wild West, of gunfights and gambling halls and a legendary friendship with the lawman Wyatt Earp. But before Doc Holliday was a Western legend he was a Southern son, born in the last days before the American Civil War and raised to be a Southern gentleman. His story sweeps from the cotton plantations of Georgia to the cattle country and silver boomtowns of the American West. The Saga of Doc Holliday comes to a dramatic conclusion in Dead Man's Hand. Tombstone, Arizona Territory, is the richest silver boom town in the country, promising fortunes to anyone daring enough to stand up to the stage coach robbers and rustlers who infest the nearby mountains. But John Henry Holliday is only trying to make a little money off the gambling tables when he's caught up in a secretive plot to stop the disturbances before they start a threatened war with Mexico. When suspicions rise and tempers ignite, the plot turns into a war between cowboys and lawmen, and he becomes a player in the most famous street fight in the Wild West.

Franklin Pierce was president of the United States in 1855, the Mexican War had just ended; the horrors of the American Civil War had not yet begun. The last of the free spirits known as the Mountain Men were securing their place in the legends of the frontier. Among these fierce adventurers was a man who called himself Highpockets. Into the harsh wilderness Highpockets had come to escape the soot of the cities and the terrible memories of war; with nothing but the strength of his heart and hands he had carved out a life of freedom in the nearly inaccessible high places of the Rocky Mountains. In the autumn of his days Highpockets stumbled across a half-frozen, half-dead immigrant boy who had wandered in the snow and ice-terrified after having been separated from the wagon train carrying his Eastern European family across the vast new world. Highpockets called the boy Cub and took him to the wilderness domain the old man called My Mountain. There, for one long winter, they lived together; the young boy learned a new language and a way of life that he'd never even imagined existed. By the end of the winter, the old man knew that Cub had learned everything he needed to know to survive in a land as dangerous as it was awesomely beautiful. It would have to be enough and more than enough . . . for at the end of that winter Highpockets had agreed to face the council of his old enemy, Painted Elk, to atone for the murder of the chief's son. Both Cub and Highpockets would be judged by the council of Elders . . . and both would learn that justice in the high places was both fair . . . and deadly.

The Beaten Territory tells the story of Annie Ryan, a woman who is running a second-rate brothel in 1890s Denver with an eye toward expansion. By chance she encounters Lydia Chambers, a society woman suffering from a laudanum habit and a bad marriage, who owns a prized property on the infamous Market Street. Annie's fortunes at the brothel turn on her niece Pearl, a pretty young girl swept up in Denver's underworld of jealousy, booze, and vice--until murder stalks the good-time girls and puts everyone's future in doubt. A rollicking tale of blurred lines, flowing booze, played-out miners and upstairs girls, The Beaten Territory delivers a compelling look at the intrigues of the Wild West, where women were enterprising and justice could be had . . . for a price.

This was the climax; the end of a lifetime of bitterness and hate-Rusty Maxwell and Ben Sharp, both grown old, grizzled, and rich; one the owner of a barbed-wire empire, a sea of grass larger than some Eastern states; the other risen to great political power, ruthlessly scheming to break the man with whom he had clashed ever since both had driven their longhorn herds over the trail to Dodge. To cut that empire in two, to bring its over-lord to his knees, had long been Ben Sharp's purpose. And in the South Western Pacific Railroad he found a weapon admirably forged to accomplish this end. But Rusty Maxwell, for all his years, had not forgotten how to fight; nor had Lance Kincaid, the fledgling eagle he had reared, if not sired. Here is the last-stand fight between the valiant Old West, bred to the plains and the saddle, fearless, a six-shooter the tool of its trade; and the raw, dollar-driven progress of the New. Lance Kincaid was certain of his position, the issues clear-cut in his mind, until proud, smiling Valerie Pickett reached the end-of-steel in her father's construction car. In a novel that catches the soul of the windswept plains, Will Ermine has painted a canvas of historic action and drama which far exceeds the dimensions and depth of the usual cowboy story. Its tense, gripping reality strikes a singular note in Western fiction.

Dakota Territory, 1866. Following the murders of a frontier fort's politically connected sutler and his wife in their illicit off-post brothel, Lieutenant Martin Molloy and his long-suffering orderly, Corporal Daniel Kohn, are ordered to track down the killers and return with "boots for the gallows" to appease powerful figures in Washington. The men journey west to the distant outpost in a beautiful valley, where the soldiers inside the fort prove to be violently opposed to their investigations. Meanwhile, Irish immigrant brothers Michael and Thomas O'Driscoll have returned from the brutal front lines of the Civil War. Unable to adapt to life as migrant farm laborers in peacetime Ohio, they reenlist in the army and are shipped to Fort Phil Kearny in the heart of the Powder River Valley. Here they are thrown into merciless combat with Red Cloud's coalition of Native tribes fighting American expansion into their hunting grounds. Amidst the daily carnage, Thomas finds a love that will lead to a moment of violence as brutal as any they have witnessed in battle-a moment that will change their lives forever. Blending intimate historical detail and emotional acuity, Wolves of Eden sets these four men on a deadly collision course in a haunting narrative that explores the cruelty of warfare and the resilience of the human spirit.

Libbie is the life story of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, wife of George Armstrong Custer. Libbie traveled the west with her famous husband, writing many books about their adventures. Her great achievement came in the years after Little Big Horn, when she burnished the reputation of her husband and his men through extensive public relations efforts. Judy Alter's storytelling and impeccable historical research bring the era of the old west to life while highlighting the life of Elizabeth Bacon Custer.

Hope is hard to come by in the hard-luck town of Willow Creek. Sam Pickett and five young men are about to change that. Sam Pickett never expected to settle in this dried-up shell of a town on the western edge of the world. He's come here to hide from the violence and madness that have shattered his life, but what he finds is what he least expects. There's a spirit that endures in Willow Creek, Montana. It seems that every inhabitant of this forgotten outpost has a story, a reason for taking a detour to this place--or a reason for staying. As the coach of the hapless high school basketball team (zero wins, ninety-three losses), Sam can't help but be moved by the bravery he witnesses in the everyday lives of people--including his own young players--bearing their sorrows and broken dreams. How do they carry on, believing in a future that seems to be based on the flimsiest of promises? Drawing on the strength of the boys on the team, sharing the hope they display despite insurmountable odds, Sam finally begins to see a future worth living.Author Stanley Gordon West has filled the town of Willow Creek with characters so vividly cast that they become real as relatives, and their stories--so full of humor and passion, loss and determination--illuminate a path into the human heart. "

Capturing the essence of the Southwest in 1915, Oliver La Farge's Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel is an enduring American classic. At a ceremonial dance, the young, earnest silversmith Laughing Boy falls in love with Slim Girl, a beautiful but elusive "American"-educated Navajo. As they experience all of the joys and uncertainties of first love, the couple must face a changing way of life and its tragic consequences.

Rediscover the golden age of the Western with this collection of four unforgettable novels of honor, adventure, and violence set against the magnificent landscapes of the American frontier The heroic exploits and violent struggles of the Old West come alive once more through this one-of-a-kind collection of four thrilling novels. Edited by Ron Hansen, this deluxe hardcover edition shows that the 1940s and 1950s was a golden age for the Western novel. In the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Ox-Bow Incident, Walter van Tilburg Clark explores the thin line between civilization and barbarism through the story of a lynch mob that targets three innocent men, exposing a dark authoritarian impulse at work the American frontier. Set in Wyoming in 1889, a time when ranchers and cattle companies waged war with each other, Jack Schaefer's iconic Shane deploys many of the genre's most essential elements, brilliantly filtered through a boy's perceptions. Alan Le May's The Searchers, the basis for John Ford's cinematic masterpiece starring John Wayne, follows the dogged quest of two men to rescue a young girl taken prisoner by Comanche warriors. And Oakley Hall's Warlock, a novel that anticipates the later books of Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry, casts the battle for control of a southwestern outpost as a bloody saga pitting a marauding gang of cowboys and rustlers against the town's defenders, led by the legendary gunslinger Clay Blaisedell. All four novels were memorably adapted for the screen, and their gripping stories--told with brisk narrative energy, psychological depth, and laconic humor--have contributed unforgettably to the Western's enduring legacy in American culture.

THE DEAD MAN S JOURNEY Journada del Muerte, the locals called it: the blistering ocean of sand and sage between the Rio Grande River to the west and the Sacramento mountain range to the east. The bones of men and horses had bleached in the mile-high desert for three hundred years. Spanish conquistadors were the first white men to explore this new furnace of the Southeastern New Mexico Territory and the first to perish. In the thin air, the riders coming down the mountain were sharply etched against the blue sky. Steam, blowing out of the ice-encrusted nostrils of their mounts and their two pack horses, surrounded the horsemen in a white veil. Descending the eastern face of the Sacramento mountains, the horses walked slowly and painfully on cracked hooves. The icy earth offered only a steep path paved with shards of glass; blood seeped around well-worn iron horseshoes. When the riders looked to the sky, they saw that the white sun would stay high enough for them to make Fort Stanton, ten miles into the valley. The riders knew the trail since boyhood. Words were not wasted in country where a man s mouth would crack and bleed like his horse s hooves. Beyond the fort lay the clapboard settlement of Lincoln. When Grady Rourke died, his sons, Sean, Patrick, and Liam, came back to claim the family land . . . What was left of it. It was January, 1878, when the Rourke brothers came back to this hard and dangerous land. They thought they were coming home. What they didn t know was that they were about to become part of a vicious struggle for power. And that they would be forced to choose sides with either John Tunstall and Alexander McSween or J. J. Dolan and Sheriff William Brady. The battle would quickly become the infamous Lincoln County War a dirty little war with no rules, no heroes, and no happy endings. Douglas Savage, the acclaimed author of Cedar City Rendezvous and Highpockets has taken the historical facts surrounding the Lincoln County War and its fascinating characters, and fashioned one of the most readable and revealing tales of the American frontier.

When Trace Riley finds the smoldering ruins of a small wagon train, he recognizes the hand behind the attack as the same group who left him as sole survivor years ago. Living off the wilderness since then, he'd finally carved out a home and started a herd--while serving as a self-appointed guardian of the trail, driving off dangerous men. He'd hoped those days were over, but the latest attack shows he was wrong. Deborah Harkness saved her younger sister and two toddlers during the attack, and now finds herself at the mercy of her rescuer. Trace offers the only shelter for miles around, and agrees to take them in until she can safely continue. His simple bachelor existence never anticipated kids and women in the picture and their arrival is unsettling--yet enticing. Working to survive the winter and finally bring justice to the trail, Trace and Deborah find themselves drawn together--yet every day approaches the moment she'll leave forever.